Obama: Congressional GOP needs to 'catch up with their country and their party'

By Jennifer Epstein

03/01/13 11:58 AM EST

President Obama will keep pushing for a comprehensive deal to roll back sequestration and reduce the deficit, he said Friday, but in the meantime Americans will be hurt by automatic spending cuts.

"It is absolutely true that this is not gonna precipitate the kind of crisis we talked about with America defaulting and some of the problems around the debt ceiling. I don’t anticipate a huge financial crisis," he said in the White House briefing room after spending under an hour meeting with congressional leaders in the Oval Office.

"But people are going to be hurt," he added. "The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that."

"This is not a win for anybody, this is a loss for the American people," he said at another point in his remarks, which included questions from four reporters.

While some pain from sequestration is unavoidable at this point, Obama said, he expects that congressional Republicans will face increasing pressure to agree to vote to reverse the cuts. "We just need Republicans in Congress to catch up with their country and their party on this," he said.

"My hope is that after some reflection, after members of Congress start hearing from constituents who are being negatively impacted, as we start seeing as we start seeing the impact that the sequester is having, that they step back and say, all right, is there a way for us to move forward on a package of entitlement reforms, tax reform, not raising tax rates, identifying programs that don't work, coming up with a plan that's comprehensive and that makes sense," he later added. "And it may take a couple of weeks, it may take months."

The president also warned that continued sequestration will be to blame if the economy takes a downturn. "Every time that we get a piece of economic news over the next month, next two months, next six months, as long as the sequester is in place, we'll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act," he said.

Asked if he could keep congressional leaders in a room until a deal is reached or otherwise force an agreement, Obama said he couldn't. "I'm not a dictator," he said, later adding he can't force a "Jedi mind-meld."